Solomon: Kubiak can ill afford to lose this one

COMMENTARY

By Jerome Solomon |
September 30, 2009

Texans coach Gary Kubiak can't afford to look past any team, even Oakland, which is at Reliant Stadium on Sunday, Jerome Solomon writes.

Well, here we go again.

The Texans host Oakland on Sunday in the most important game of Gary Kubiak's head coaching career.

No hyperbole here. That's the way it is going to be all season for the Texans' fourth-year head coach.

Kubiak is pretty much where Cecil Cooper was early in the baseball season: in a must-win situation. If his team loses Sunday, he will pretty much be in a can't-win situation.

The Texans are talented enough to be a playoff team. They are talented enough to post a winning record.

They are probably not good enough to bounce back from a 1-3 start to do those things — especially since those three losses would be home games.

The Raiders are so bad that one can't imagine the Texans falling to them at home. But most NFL games are decided by a play or two. Kubiak can't afford that play or two to go against him this week. It would be the loss of no return.

Entering the season, it would take a special situation for another 8-8 season (or worse) to be acceptable. Kubiak's squad has erased “special” from any losing situation this season by losing its first two home games.

No doubt, Kubiak's job is on the line this week.

If the Texans lose, we'll talk about what might happen — whether or not Bob McNair will pull the trigger — for the next few months, but that would be a lot of wasted air, ink and blog space. Let JaMarcus Russell and the Raiders get out of Reliant Stadium with a victory and Kubiak would be as lame a duck as Cooper was this summer.

‘The toughest weeks'

“Your job is on the line every week in this league,” a former NFL head coach said in a phone interview Tuesday evening, “but for all of us, there are certain times when the wheels can come off, and when you look back at it, those are the toughest weeks.

“I guarantee you — go ahead and write a column about it if you want to — but I guarantee you Gary isn't thinking about that. He's just thinking about Sunday's game and how to beat the Raiders. He might look back and know it was the game of games, but he won't enter it thinking it is the most important game.”

This coach has been fired twice from head coaching positions, so having put together a couple of teams that performed below expectations he has an idea of what Kubiak is dealing with.

Kubiak might not be thinking about it, but he is in trouble. The roof at Reliant Stadium is closed. Translation: the heat is on.

We're at the point in Kubiak's tenure with the Texans where many take any positive words written or said about him as coddling, and they look at negative reviews of his performance as too long in coming.

This is when a coach — good or bad — becomes most vulnerable: when people aren't even interested in hearing the excuses for failure.

Kubiak, who went 6-10 his first season and 8-8 the last two, can't even say the cupboard is bare. He bought all of these groceries. He hired the entire coaching staff.

The team we see every Sunday is as much the Houston Kubiaks as the Houston Texans. If the team fails, there is nothing to discuss.

The wrong debates

Seriously, is the debate of whether Kubiak made a good hire in Frank Bush as rookie defensive coordinator even worth having at this point? Even with the worst defense, statistically, in the league?

Should anyone waste time contemplating if it was a smart move to turn over the play-calling duties to 12-year-old Kyle Shanahan this season? Even if the offense begins to sputter.

Hardly. It's too late.

Kubiak can try to explain those decisions in future job interviews. The results are more important than the explanations.

Call me a coddler if you like, but Kubiak can and should win in this league. Several of his former players expect him to eventually be a great coach. He knows too much about the game — things that work — not to do well. And while he is an offensive coach, he isn't some silly, hardheaded egomaniacal genius.

But if Kubiak is going to be a successful coach in Houston, this week is crucial. As is next week, and so on, and so on and …